Today marks the release of Teengirl Fantasy’s new album, 8AM. The 12-track record sees the duo of Logan Takahashi and Nick Weiss exploring that dreamy, delirious headspace when your body is exhausted but you want to keep the night going, articulating something deep and spacious and emotionally enriching. Beats still find their way through the late-night/early-morning haze, but they function in more hypnotic, fragmented ways, a stumbling aesthetic that ushers both outward and inward.
TMT has the honor of premiering 8AM in full. Check it out below, followed by a track-by-track breakdown from Teengirl Fantasy. It’s available now on the always-reliable Planet Mu.
Teengirl Fantasy’s track-by-track breakdown:
01. “Glare”
Nick: This track happened kind of accidentally, it’s pretty much an excerpt from a short moment of a much longer live jam we recorded in Woodstock New York in a little cabin in the woods. We tried to edit the arrangement and make it more complex, but then ended up just going with the original unedited version. It feels more like a fleeting moment that way.
02. “Crash Soft”
Nick: We wrote this track much before the rest of the album. It’s kind of an attempt to wed late night radio quiet storm aesthetics with something heavier and more club.
Logan: If you’ve seen us play live over the last couple years there’s a good chance you’ve heard a version of this. I think it’s the oldest track on the album.
03. “Telepaths”
Logan: Think this one does a nice job of encapsulating the overall concept of the album, and is a nice statement to lead-in to everything else with. We’re big fans of ambient house and I think you can hear that in this one, with the whole digitally organic/tribal sonic palette.
Nick: This one is the start of the album’s “trip.”
04. “We Out”
Nick: Kind of a continuation in feeling to some of the tracks on 7AM, this song is a “credits roll.” We have a lot of those for whatever reason.
Logan: When we were discussing what to call this we talked a lot about how it worked as music to like walk out of a place to with your crew or something.
05. “It Was Already Light Out”
Nick: One of my favorites. We wrote this more recently, I don’t really know how to describe it. Reminds me of one time we played a music festival outside the great wall and ended up sleeping somewhere in the forest where you could still hear bass raging all night but from really far away.
06. “Where I Went”
Logan: Listening back I think you can hear the influence of both of one our favorite tracks of all time “Moments in Love.” Wasn’t really conscious of this while making it.
07. “All of the Time”
Nick: This song took many different forms before it reached this final one. It started out super minimal. I love how it ended up, how it takes a while and begins amorphous but coalesces into something really intense.
Logan: We spent a lot of time focusing on the pacing of this track — how it develops and unfolds.
08. “Star-rise”
Logan: Recorded in a studio in Berlin in 2013. The main synth sound comes from a Waldorf Microwave XT that was there.
Nick: Simplicity made this one. We also used this synth called the Elka Synthex that had Russiana cyrillic on it for the droney pad sound.
09. “Don’t”
Logan: Written in the summer of 2016 during the last sessions for the album, along with “It Was Already Light Out.” Something I noticed about the last batch of tracks is that we’re playing around with space and silence a bit more than we have in the past.
10. “Seeds ft. Khalif Jones”
Nick: The instrumental for this actually began as an entry for a new compilation of “Music For Plants,” a series by artist Peter Coffin. Later on we hooked up with Khalif Jones (f.k.a. Le1f) and he was gracious enough to lend his beautiful voice and words to the song which gave it a much more personal narrative and ended up being the only vocal track on the album.
Logan: Khalif hasn’t released something with as melodic vocals as these before, so am proud that we get to help introduce it.
11. “En Route”
Logan: Another one from the Woodstock sessions. This one gets to some almost IDM-y places.
12. “Wet Eyes and Exhilaration”
Nick: Don’t know if we’ve ever made more bounces of one song. Took so long to figure out the mix since it just wanted to be epic. Yet another Finale/credits roll…
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